Rally Raid Dakar - Stage 6. Tatra goes to the lead.
The 6th stage's roads are started in Iquique (Chile) and finished near the border with Peru in Arica city. For this large slice of desert before the rest day, the menu is full of dunes, whose sizes increase as the day passes by. Two Kamaz's drivers leaded this race until 300th km. 4 years after winning his 1st stage victory on the Dakar, during the last special on the 2007 edition, Czech driver Alès Loprais (Tatra) got the winning feeling back on this 6th special of the Dakar 2011. Taking full advantage of the problems encountered by the two leading drivers on the Kamaz team, the son of the mythical Karel, finally completed the day's 423 timed kilometres 5'55 ahead of Russian Firdaus Kabirov (Kamaz) and 9'39 in front of Russian Vladimir Chagin (Kamaz). Loprais's success brings to a close the series of 24 consecutive stage victories for Kamaz on the Dakar. In the general standings, the situation is the next:
1st - Kabirov / Belyaev / Mokeev, Kamaz №502, 23:43:40, 00:00:00.
2nd - Chagin / Savostin / Shaysultanov, Kamaz №500, 24:03:00, 00:19:20.
3rd - Loprais / Holan / Kalina, Tatra №504, 24:05:05, 00:21:25.
4th - Nikolaev / Mizyukaev / Rybakov, Kamaz №512, 25:01:58, 01:26:18.
5th - Echter / Ruf / Klein, MAN №507, 25:54:37, 02:10:57.
The bike general standing leader is Marc Coma (KTM); and the car leader is Carlos Sainz (Volkswagen).